Looks interesting, I think I'll watch it tonight. Thanks for the link. It kind of reminds me of the Raw Model blog guy - he is all into food forests and whatnot. He's REALLY into it and might come across as a bit obsessive, but it's super fascinating stuff. I like it!

_________________when you realise how perfect everything is, you will tilt you head back and laugh at the sky. -buddha

My husband recently discovered this guy and we're trying his methods in our garden. Hard to find wood chips in our area, but we're using dead leaves and other stuff we can scrounge up and it's doing fairly well. Our radishes were/are gigantic, and the weeds are pretty much nonexistent everywhere we've put down a covering and the newspaper...

I thought it was interesting too. Although he had a few misstatements, he did qualify it by saying he lacks a background in nutrition. None of our plants, regardless of soil health, ever were sources of vitamin D!

We try to do the wood chip thing, but more limited than what he's doing, and veganic rather than using blood/manures. And the key for starting out really is to not plant directly in chips, but in furrows reaching down to older soil. I have friends who laid down 18" - 2' of chips on their huge garden site (primarily to inhibit blackberries from re-emerging.) After 3 years they still complain about needing to add lots of extra nitrogen (they primarily use humanure from their composting toilets), but their plants all look awesome to me. They have a bunch of us saving and using our own urine, too!

_________________Formerly Kaleicious. I still love kale, but no more than lots of other garden greens too! Orach is currently my favorite.

My husband recently discovered this guy and we're trying his methods in our garden. Hard to find wood chips in our area, but we're using dead leaves and other stuff we can scrounge up and it's doing fairly well. Our radishes were/are gigantic, and the weeds are pretty much nonexistent everywhere we've put down a covering and the newspaper...

This sounds more like 'lasagna gardening,' which is an awesome method. We try to do this on all new beds we start, as it provides a much more nutritious base than chips alone. What we scrounge up has been too coarse for direct seeding, but works great for anything we plant from starts.

_________________Formerly Kaleicious. I still love kale, but no more than lots of other garden greens too! Orach is currently my favorite.

My husband recently discovered this guy and we're trying his methods in our garden. Hard to find wood chips in our area, but we're using dead leaves and other stuff we can scrounge up and it's doing fairly well. Our radishes were/are gigantic, and the weeds are pretty much nonexistent everywhere we've put down a covering and the newspaper...

butterbobbin, try checking with your local electric or telephone company. I found out ours will drop off a load of chips for free (they have to pay at the municipal green waste facility when they dump them, so they are always happy to find people who will take them.)

But be prepared for a TON of them. Maybe not literally...but my pile was bigger than my car.

We've had great results so far, just using this as mulch as is. Plants are doing so much better than normal, minimal slug and snail damage, and almost zero weeds.

I'm actually surprised it's working, since we didn't age it, or spread it out and let it rot. We do water, though, with drip irrigation and collected rainwater.

_________________Alina NiemiAuthor of The New Scoop: Recipes for Dairy-Free, Vegan Ice Cream in Unusual Flavors (Plus Some Old Favorites),Lizard Lunch and Other Funny Animal Poems for Kids, and The Hawaii Doodle Bookhttp://alinaspencil.com